Pterocarpus erinaceus is a highly valued savanna tree in West and Central Africa, important for timber, medicine, livestock fodder, and cultural uses, but now endangered due to overexploitation.
African rosewood or African kino (Pterocarpus erinaceus, family Fabaceae) is a deciduous tree with a high, open crown of few branches, usually 12 to 15 metres tall and sometimes 25 metres. In good conditions its trunk is straight and cylindrical, up to 75 cm across, but on poor sites it is often twisted, fluted and low-branched. It produces one of the finest woods in the region and is one of the three main species traded as hongmu, or red wood, for high-quality Chinese furniture. It has been seriously over-exploited, and attempts have been made to replant it in the savanna and on farms.
It grows in West Africa from Sierra Leone to the Central African Republic, in open country, wooded savanna and woodland and at the edges of humid forest, often on gravelly or lateritic soils at the foot of slopes, from 200 to about 1,000 metres. It tolerates a dry season of up to nine months and is very drought tolerant once established. In the dry season the whole tree is covered with bright golden-yellow flowers, which fall to make a golden carpet before the new leaves appear. Young trees grow slowly at first: in northern Côte d'Ivoire, planted seedlings averaged 2.8 metres after two and a half years and 5.5 metres after five and a half. Trees regrow strongly after cutting, and the seed sprouts in six to ten days after soaking.
Source: Useful Tropical Plants database (Fern, K.).
The bark, leaves, roots, and resin are traditionally used to treat diarrhea, fever, coughs, wounds, infections, and inflammatory conditions.
The foliage serves as an important dry-season fodder for livestock, while leaves and seeds are occasionally consumed by humans in some communities.
The wood and resin play key roles in traditional music, dyeing, body adornment, and spiritual practices such as protection rituals and marriage ceremonies.
The tree is slow-growing but drought- and fire-tolerant, propagated mainly by seed, managed through coppicing and pollarding, and contributes to soil fertility through nitrogen fixation.